Douglas Carswell

Douglas Carswell was first elected to Parliament in 2005 by a slender 920 votes. He was returned as MP for Clacton in 2010 with a 12,000 majority. He is the author of The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy and believes that the internet is making the world a vastly better place.

If David Cameron wants military strikes in Syria, he must consult the House of Commons

The situation in Syria is desperate – but Parliament must decide what to do

Looking at many of today’s newspapers, it seems that someone somewhere in Whitehall has decided on military strikes in Syria. Either that, or they still haven’t quite mastered this media management thingy.

Missile strikes could be made within a matter of days, according to some briefings. Action is imminent, imply others.

Hold on a moment. The Whitehall securocrats might have decided on intervention, but what about the rest of us?

David Cameron tells us that he has spoken to Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and Stephen Harper. Great. But what about speaking to those we elect in the House of Commons?

Action in Syria, we are also now told, could be made without reference to Parliament. Royal Prerogative – those powers of a medieval monarch that Downing Street has inherited – hands the final say to those sitting round the table at the National Security Council.

This cannot be right – and David Cameron knows that it is not right.

Back in February 2006, as the Leader of the Opposition, David Cameron specifically said that there should be curbs on a Prime Minister’s power to go to war. In order to help restore trust in politics, the BBC reported at the time, Mr Cameron wanted to ensure that “MPs, rather than the prime minister, had the final say over whether troops were committed to military action”.

In his speech, Mr Cameron complained about how “we first heard about the government's decision to send 4,000 troops to Afghanistan in the pages of the Sun newspaper”. Today, we are hearing about the Government’s decision to get stuck into Syria in much the same way.

No doubt the comment thread below will now fill up with some folk who say “But we cannot allow tyrants to use chemical weapons with impunity”. I don’t disagree.

Others will point out that we have no business getting involved in a proxy war between Russia/Iran and the Saudis. And that we are militarily under-prepared and overstretched besides. Again, I don’t disagree with any of that.

My point is that the place for those arguments is not just on on websites like this. It is in the House of Commons where the final decision must be made – and where I suspect many MPs, like me, are open-minded.

If the case for military involvement in Syria is as strong as those at the top of this Government seem to believe, they will have no difficulty in coming to the House of Commons and making their case.